We all reach that age when we question what the hell teenagers are talking about. We become disconnected from adolescents and we discover a rift between what is means to not be “hip” and what it means to not understand. When I came across the word “bae” in my news feed written by my teenage cousin. My first thought was this:

BAE

The word bae is a mystery to a lot of us older folk. Even though I am only 21. So I turned to what all of us do when we have questions. Google. The first definition I came across was the Danish translation. Bae in Danish translates to “poop” in English. So, it goes without saying I was confused because my cousin used Bae as a caption to a picture of a sexy black man. I had no idea about my cousin’s racism.

God, this hurts to look at.

I eventually dug deeper. Bae means “Before Anything Else”. Which makes more sense, except it doesn’t. There are several reasons it doesn’t make sense.
The first reason for this confusion is normal acronyms have some way to show they are acronyms. Such as upper case lettering or periods between the letters. I know with text talk properly using grammar is almost unnecessary but in this case I suggest it.
Some more playful reasons would be, poop is definitely not before anything else. If you are like me in the morning, coffee equals bae. Than comes poop. I can’t even imagine poop before having my coffee.

As an American, I think the Danish should change bae to coffee. This would make significantly more sense and would solve multiple translation issues.

Or perhaps Google can have a teenage translator.
Or, teenagers can just stop.